Deep: Real Life with Spinal Cord Injury Book

The publication I work for has recruited Peggy Orenstein as a writer, so her publishing company sent me a copy of her newest book. I didn't know much about her, other than she wrote an article for The New York Times Magazine (is it okay for little girls to loooooove princesses, pink and glitter?) that I loved.

Now I feel like I know EVERYTHING about her. This book is a memoir of Peggy Orenstein and her devoted husband trying to get pregnant. For a year....then two....then six.

They try *everything* imaginable, from IVF to Chinese hamster guts to Italian nun hormones (no, I'm not making this up) to good old-fashioned sex. Nothing works - at least, nothing works for six years. I've yet to find out what eventually brings Daisy, the couple's young daughter, into the world. But it's more interesting than it sounds to read about all the differnt ways a pair of strangers tries to get pregnant. Because rather than a gets-old-fast "and then I tried this, and then I tried that" account, Orenstein consistently ruminates over one of the great feminist questions of our day: when should a woman get pregnant?

Indeed, one of the best achievements of second-wave and third-wave feminism is that women have the opportunity to accomplish more in their careers and personal lives before having children - or not having children at all. Orenstein was on the fence about having kids; then her biological clock went off like an alarm clock on the first day of the school year. She's my kind of feminist: doesn't buy into any of the crap about only women who have children as valuable, how sad you must be if you want to have children, and (what she struggles with the most) you shouldn't wait too long to have kids.

But then you could end up like Peggy Orenstein and be in your late thirties, spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on chances (which at times feel like snake oil, I'd imagine. Quite the paradox.

Trying to get pregant - rather, a feminist trying to get pregnant is a really fascinating memoir.